Day 7 (Saturday, May 27, 2006)

 

6:30 AM: We're due to pull into Skagway at7 AM, so we once again have breakfast delivered to the room.

7 AM: We dock in Skagway, and head off for our 8-hour shore excursion.

Volendam docked in Skagway:

We will begin by taking a bus out of Alaska into Canada's Yukon territory.

The bus stopped so we could take a picture of the White Pass RR we would be riding home:

 

While in the Yukon, we will have a lunch of barbecue chicken, baked potato, coleslaw and "homemade donuts." The donuts were always mentioned in the description of this tour, and Barb would have become violent if they turned out to be just store-bought--they weren't.

As we traveled through the White Pass, the driver explained that during the Alaskan gold rush of the 1890's, prospectors would come to Skagway by boat and be amazed to find that not only were they not at the gold fields, they had a 600-mile journey through some pretty severe terrain to arrive at the gold fields. There were two main routes. One was less strenuous, but populated by bandits, while the other was a real challenge. To make matters worse, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police enforced a rule that all heading to the gold fields must carry a full year's worth of supplies (2000 pounds). The Canadians weren't interested in taking care of unprepared folks who wound up in their territory.

Eventually, a rail line was built from Skagway to the gold fields passing through the White Pass, which was one of the routes traveled by foot before the railroad. Unfortunately, the railroad was finished about 6 months after the goldrush ended, so no prospector ever used it. We would pick up this railroad close to the northern end of our bus trip and ride it back to Skagway.

Along the way north, we passed a bridge built over the fault line where the North American plate dives under the Pacific plate. Fault lines are the places where earthquakes occur, and the folks up here eventually got tired of replacing the bridge after every quake. The bridge now in place is totally anchored and supported on the North American plate side of the fault. When there's a quake, they simply adjust the road on the Pacific plate side so that it again meets the bridge. (In the picture, the fault line runs from lower right to upper left.).

As we get into the Yukon, we find that there's still a great deal of snow on the ground. Our driver warns us not to wander off the road because the snow is 4-5 feet deep.

Along the way we spot a black bear by the side of the road. He doesn't appear to be spooked by the bus, so we pull over to shoot some pictures through the bus windows. A little farther and the driver spots a bald eagle on the side of the road eating a rabbit. As we pull up, the eagle drops its prey and heads for the top of a tree on the other side of the road, allowing a quick "snapshot"--no time to frame, etc.

After lunch, we stop in a little village right out of "Northern Exposure." Carcross--from "caribou crossing"--consists of a general store with great ice cream, a small hotel, the Catholic church which was the first building in town more than 100 years ago, and some rundown buildings which are obviously from the early days of the town. There is a small visitor center where we have Yukon stamps added to our passports.

We head back south, stopping along the way at what the Guinness Book calls "the world's smallest desert."

We leave the Yukon, and cross back into British Columbia where we board the southbound White Pass RR at Fraser. Dick discovers that they will allow passengers to ride on the platforms between cars, and stakes out a great spot for shots as we head south back to Skagway.

On the way down, we pass an avalanche which occurred four days earlier, and closed the railway for a day while they removed 65 feet of snow from the tracks. The snow carried 2 flatcars from a siding over a cliff, and bent the rails on the siding into pretzels. We passed close enough to the remaining avalanche that we could see from the platform that the snow was wet and heavy with embedded rocks and trees. Dick tells the conductor that his impression of an avalanche had always been lots of light snow moving very fast. The conductor explained the avalanche mechanism, and said to think of an avalanche as being more like wet concrete--with embedded rocks and trees--moving at almost 200 mph!

We arrived back in Skagway in late afternoon. The train station is close enough to walk to the ship, where we find a longer-than-usual line to re-board the ship. Turns out that the metal detector wasn't working, and they had to hand-scan everybody boarding.

We have dinner in the swanky Pinnacle Grill aboard ship:

At 9 PM, we leave Skagway and head for Glacier Bay. (Yes, we did stay awake for this sailing!)

Go to day 8

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